General multi language questions for Maximo

Answer

Please see the information below on the extent of multi-language capabilities in Maximo. The following scenarios are from the perspective of an English base installation.

Field labels and menus will appear in the user's language. Key values stay in the base language with no translation. The general rule for multi-language (ml) is any key values such as work order number, ticket number, and also values in the synonymdomain that contain key values such as status, type etc. stay in the base language. If an English user enters data in a company description field, then German user would see the exact same description. If a German user desires to see it in German, he/she could update the field. Company.NAME is one of the fields that is mlsupported and mlinuse out of the box. Other tables can be multi-language enabled in Database Configuration. However, Work Order is an exception as it's a transactional table so it's not Multi-language supported. Appendix A in the System Administrator's guide has more details.

Data in fields that are multi language supported and enabled will appear in the language in which data is entered but can then be changed by a user who uses a different language by overwriting the data in the other language. If data (i.e. description) is entered by a base language user, then different language users will see the data created by the base language user. However, if a non-base language (ex. Dutch) enters description, then base language or non-Dutch users will see a blank description. Non- Dutch users can then enter the description in their own words. This implies that two or more copies of data are retained for mlsupported fields - one for the original language and one for each additional language. When the German user retrieves a work order that an English user created and changes the description or the work order from English to German, the German user will always see the description in German whereas the English user will continue to see the description in English This scenario would be correct except that the description for the Work Order table is not Multi-language supported as it's a transactional table. It would apply to other tables that are Multi-language supported.

The only way that data in one field will appear in multiple languages is if the end user modifies the content of the field to his / her own language. There is no attempt by Maximo to translate automatically.